Peace? (No Such Thing)
by coffee-not-decaf
Summary: Mordred isn't sure why they're here or why he's friends with them. He just knows that whatever is going on can only end badly for him. Or, someone had the bright idea to give Mordred driving lessons. (Mordred-centric with slight Merlin/Arthur)


"Why, look, it's the sullen teenager! I wonder what he's being moody about today. Is he out of money? Out of food? Ooh, I bet it's a girl problem. I love it when he has girl problems, always makes for such an entertaining time."

Mordred sighed as he slipped his headphones out of his ears at the sound of an over exuberant voice filling up his kitchen. He had just been about to ravage the pantry for chocolate bars, goddammit. Now he wouldn't get a moment's rest.

"Hello, Gwaine," he said without turning around, instead choosing to stare out the small window above his sink. If he squinted, he could see Arthur's Jaguar parked out in front. Oh, shit, if Arthur came, that meant that all of them were probably here. He may love the idiots that occasionally ransacked his home, but that didn't mean he actually had to enjoy their company. "I don't mean to be blunt – well, actually I do. Why are you here?"

"What, I can't come and visit my favorite grumpy bastard?" Mordred finally resigned himself to turning around. Gwaine, apparently, had made himself at home on Mordred's couch, for his legs were kicked up on the coffee table. "Where are your parents?"

"Trip up to visit my sister in Brighton," Mordred said, surveying Gwaine suspiciously as he strode across so that he was standing right behind him. His friend threw a megawatt smile up at him as he leaned further back, hands above his head. "That was not an invitation to throw a party here, by the way. Don't think I don't know what's going through your head."

"I'm wounded," Gwaine put a hand to his heart.

"Hey, look, it's the rat!"

Mordred sighed again at the sound of a new voice. "Hi, Merlin."

Merlin grinned as he came in through the garage door, throwing his camouflage jacket haphazardly onto the coat rack. It fell onto the floor immediately. Mordred would have made a comment about how just because Merlin was the single messiest person alive didn't mean that everyone lived in their own filth, but he was cut off by three more faces following the new arrival. Arthur, Leon, and Percival were all annoying in their own right, but none of them competed with the levels of crazy on which Gwaine operated. And Merlin wasn't even on the scale anymore.

As his house was trampled by uninvited guests, Mordred figured that he may as well just give in now. Sitting down on the black spindly chair opposite the plush blue couch that Merlin and Arthur, pressed into each other's sides in a sickening display of affection, had joined Gwaine on, he asked "So where are Lancelot and Elyan? They're the only ones of you that I can bear sometimes without wanting to thrash myself."

"Visiting Gwen in France," Arthur replied, although his words were slightly muffled what with Merlin's shoulder in the way. Mordred idly wondered whether Arthur was in a competition with the versions of himself of future and past, each of him seeing how deeply he could bury himself in Merlin's chest. They were probably all tied.

"We weren't invited," Merlin continued for Arthur with a dramatic roll of his eyes. Leon had taken a seat next to Mordred as he watched Percival raid the refrigerator. Mordred shook his head; why did _they_ get to eat in his house when he couldn't?

"I can't imagine why," said Mordred with only a touch of sarcasm.

Well, that was a lie. Sarcasm was his greatest defense against the legally insane university students that attempted to take over his life on a weekly basis.

"So why are you here?" Mordred asked as Percival made his way over to their group, leaning against Leon's chair as he munched on a pickle. Wait – There were pickles in the fridge? Oh, well. A question for another time. "Let me guess. Someone needs bailing out of jail. No, wait, that's not it. Oh – Gwaine has a history exam and you're giving the hopeless case to your own resident history nerd. Or maybe Arthur was finally disowned and now needs a place to stay. That doesn't make sense, though, does it? That's Merlin's responsibility, not mine, thank the Lord. Okay, I give up. What is it?"

He tried to ignore the smiles replicated on each of the five's faces. When they were all smiling, nothing good could be happening. It was practically law.

"It has just occurred to us that your sixteenth birthday has passed," Percival began nonchalantly through a mouthful of pickle.

"You just now figured that out? In case you've gained short-term memory loss, you'll recall that you actually threw me my party. Gwaine told me I could now legally fuck all the girls I wanted and Leon even gave me a manual on safe sex."

"I did, didn't I?" Leon spoke as if recalling a fond memory.

"We didn't forget about that," Gwaine assured him. "No, we just didn't realize the repercussions of what age sixteen meant. No one has taught you how to drive yet, have they?"

"No," Mordred regarded all of them with a touch more suspicion. "Why?"

Gwaine beamed. "Brilliant! We'll teach you!"

Mordred stared at them, unblinking.

And then kept staring for a little longer because _there was no way in hell that this was happening?_

"What do you mean by _teach_?" For the life of him, Mordred could not reconcile the word teach with any of the men sitting in front of him.

Never mind that Percival was actually studying in order to teach primary school. That was entirely beside the point.

"Teach, as in you learn how to drive a vehicle from our overwhelming expertise," Arthur said. "C'mon, rat, it'll be fun!"

Mordred was pretty sure that Arthur needed to look the word 'fun' up in the dictionary, because he was definitely basing his statement off of the wrong definition.

He proceeded to tell him as such.

"Shove it," Arthur said as he heard Mordred's thoughts on the subject. "You need to learn how to drive and you have five ready and available teachers here to aid you in this great quest."

"You spend too much time reading fantasy books," Mordred snorted. "This isn't a quest, this is all of you yelling different things at me at the same time until I get a migraine and accidentally on purpose run us into a tree just to get the nightmare to end."

"He's not wrong," Leon said after a beat. "All of us teaching at once would be a tad overwhelming."

"Thanks, Leon." Mordred occasionally forget that Leon had his moments of sanity.

The same, sadly, could not be said for the rest of them.

"Well, I guess we need to decide which one of us is teaching him." Percival was still eating the pickle. It was making Mordred all the hungrier; he hoped that there were more in the fridge.

"Here's an idea," Mordred said brightly. "How about none of you?"

"That's a stupid idea," Gwaine informed him. Mordred scowled.

"I'll do it," Merlin volunteered. Mordred found he actually didn't mind the idea; Merlin was much more patient than them, which probably had to do with all the time he spent with Arthur. Anyone that spent time with Arthur on purpose had to have the patience of a saint. "C'mon, Mordred, I'll save you from the terrible clutches of the rest of these tossers."

"What?" Arthur jerked his head off of where it had been resting on Merlin's chest. Mordred groaned silently; he should have known that it was too good to be true. "You're a horrible driver, Merlin. Worst I've ever seen."

"I only drive badly when _you're _in the car," Merlin said. "Because you never stop screaming at me about what a terrible driver I am."

"I do no such thing –!" Arthur began hotly, but Merlin cut him off, voice pitched higher in a mocking imitation.

"_Merlin, don't you see that tree that's fifty meters away? Keep to the other side of the road; you're going to kill us! Have you ridden your motorcycle so often that you've become incompetent at using a steering wheel?" _

"I don't sound like that," Arthur grumbled, shoving Merlin's shoulder.

"Yes, you do," said Gwaine, who was in stitches. Leon and Percival were hiding grins as well. "With the motorcycle part especially."

"It's not my fault that the bloody thing is evil," Arthur said, crossing his arms petulantly like the five year old Mordred was almost sure he was.

He did chuckle, slightly, at the reference to Arthur's ongoing war with Merlin's motorcycle. He hated the thing with a burning passion that nothing could rival, and he made no effort to conceal the utter disdain he had for the death trap.

Mordred would have bet most of his life savings that Arthur and Merlin had fucked against it at least once. But he didn't like to think about that too often or his mind may never recover from the vivid mental images.

"And besides, you don't drive badly _just _when I'm there," Arthur pointed out. "Didn't you and Lancelot almost hit a dog once?"

"We don't speak of that incident!" Merlin hissed under his breath. "It doesn't count anyway. Lance was driving."

Mordred would have been perfectly content to sit there and receive entertainment in the form of Merlin and Arthur's loud argument until the group all forget what brought them to this point in the first place and he could wave all of them on their merry way without ever having to get in a car. Apparently, fate, the bitch that it was, had other plans, ones that arrived in the form of Gwaine, speaking in an exaggerated whisper.

"While our signature old married couple battles it out once again, how about _I _take you out for a spin?"

"_No!"_

There wasn't any telling who had protested first; Mordred knew he had exclaimed it loudly and without abandon, but he knew that four other voices had entered the fray as well, even though he could have sworn half of them had reached the halfway point of having angry sex on Mordred's floor.

The idea of Gwaine teaching anyone anything was truly a frightening concept.

Mordred was glad that his pain was starting to be recognized.

But it was too soon for that, as in the next moment, Leon opened his mouth, "I'm easily the most qualified driver in the room…"

Mordred's head landed in his hands with a thump. He thought longingly of all the food in his refrigerator and hoped that Percival had saved him a pickle.

But with the way his luck was going today?

Not a chance in hell.


End file.
